Richard D North.

Obviously we all need to cross our fingers for BP. The oil giant needs the same luck as the seashores its oil may yet severely damage. This may, after all, be the worst such accident we have yet seen, as I said on the BBC's Today programme. I hope I wasn't premature in a later FT letter in suggesting that the oil giant, and its industry, will flourish however awful the outcome of this accident, and deserves to. Read more...

Just before I get too sunny, here are three areas where the country's politicians, and the Tories not least, face real problems. They all centre on the country's habit of self-deception. Read more...

This is a golden period for Conservatives. Their party is a natural vehicle for the politics and government of the early 21st Century. Who'd a thunk it? Read more...

One ought to take some risks at such a time. Mine is to say that this is the best political period for decades. Read more...

This is still a country which is socially conservative, sexually permissive, economically entrepreneurial and obstinately attached to a statist welfare system. But we are less inclined to disenfranchise the fence-sitting Lib-Dem voters. What now for the Tories? Read more...

In previous posts I have remarked what a great political and constitutional opportunity the UK now has. But it depends far more on individual MPs than on their leaders, constitutional historians, greybeard commentators or anyone else. Read more...

Roman Polanski's movie is an excellent account of Robert Harris's book. But it is even more of a post-modern experience. Read more...

This is perhaps the most exciting election of my lifetime, and I don't care who wins..... Read more...

I went on the BBC morning news show to say that the BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico (a) might be dreadful but (b) would be the first such celebrity event to be an ecological disaster if it is one. Read more...